


Irritum

by Ceris_Malfoy



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: "Nothing.", "What have you done?", AU, BAMF!Starscream, Frightened!Megatron, M/M, Powerful!Starscream, Sociopath!Starscream, Starscream has his own Sigma ability, Very AU, and guess what?, it's not speed, very
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2017-12-06 01:20:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceris_Malfoy/pseuds/Ceris_Malfoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>-Nothingness.-</p><p>Megatron is afraid of nothing, hesitates because of nothing. </p><p> </p><p>  <i>"What is your gift?"</i><br/>"Nothing."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Irritum

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know. Just a thought that grew a little too large for its britches when I was trying to write the next chapter of The Difficulty in Letting Go.  
> This will likely never be continued, and it is as finished as it's going to get for now. If someone wants to flesh this out a bit and breathe true life into it, be my guest!

I.

“Where is he?” Megatron demands, voice heavy with the panic that is racing through him.

Vos is gone; the Autobots have done the unthinkable and not only bombed Vos, but also Vo’Sil, the little town to the East of Vos to which all seekers and seeker-kin sent their sparklings and younglings, noble-born and gutter-born alike, so that trines may form in safety and without pressure. All eighty-nine of the seekers under Starscream’s command, every last one of them hand-chosen and trained by the seeker to be the first squadron in Megatron’s army, are half-mad with grief. And Starscream, his Air Commander, cannot be found.

Starscream has not been seen or heard from since three joors before the news broke. Megatron thinks, no, _knows_ that somehow Starscream knew the second the attack happened, knew the second that over 36,000 adult seekers and seeker-kin were wiped out of existence, knew the second that just under 1,000 sparklings and younglings were exterminated for crimes they didn’t even know about. Somehow, Starscream knew.

And that fills Megatron with more fear than he cares to admit. He doesn’t even once entertain the idea that Starscream helped plan the attack – if there is one thing he knows of Starscream, it is that his seeker is almost fanatic about the protection of his frame-kin. What fills his spark with dread is the knowledge that for as strong as Starscream pretends to be, the seeker is actually very fragile emotionally – the losses he’d suffered prior to becoming Megatron’s lover leaving him a strange, warped perversion of everything he should have been. Megatron loves and wants him regardless, but he cannot pretend that sometimes he doesn’t wander what it would be like between them if Starscream was sane and whole.

And now the Autobots have stolen the one thing Starscream had left.

So, yes. Megatron is scared. He is scared that he will find his seeker too late, that Starscream will have finally jumped over that final precipice that is all that separates him from the deep abyss of madness, that Starscream will have moved on and gone to a place that Megatron could not follow, would not follow because there is too much left to be done before he joins his ancestors in the Well of Sparks.

It takes longer than he likes for Soundwave to locate Starscream, but thankfully the seeker is close by. He rushes to the landing strip of the their current base (it is actually all that remains of the shopping district of whatever small town they’re in, flattened beneath the storm of artillery fire and mechs much larger than civilians were used to), and there he finds Starscream. And for a moment, just a brief moment, he wishes he honestly had not found his wayward seeker.

Starscream is not half-mad with grief. He is not half-mad with anger, or rage, or despair, or any emotion Megatron would expect to see from his emotional wreck of a lover. Starscream is … _empty_. He is standing ever so still on the landing strip, wings held high and proud as they ever were. His hands are relaxed by his sides, and for once his claws – wickedly sharp and quite deadly – have been retracted. His facial platting is the very picture of serenity, his mouth turned in a slight, bemused smile.

But it is his optics that makes Megatron stop abruptly, spark clenching in sharp terror. There is _nothing_ in his seeker’s optics. A great void looks at him, endless and empty.

“Starscream?” he queries, voice soft.

Starscream remains still, remains silent. He does not move, does not twitch, does nothing to acknowledge that Megatron is there.

“Starscream?” he tries again, louder this time, walking steadily towards his seeker.

This time something flickers within his seeker’s optics, and the fear in Megatron’s spark grows. There is the strange sensation of heaviness in the air, a weight that grows thicker the closer Megatron gets. He thinks it is the fear that gives the sensation of something _other_ watching him through his seeker’s optics, as if the abyss within Starscream’s gaze is now watching him, weighing, judging.

“They bombed Vos,” Starscream says, voice as pleasant as if he is merely commenting on the weather.

“Yes,” Megatron answers.

Starscream humms and his wings flutter slightly. “They should not have done that.” His helm cocks to the side, smile still slight, facial plating serene. “They will regret doing that.”

Something about the way Starscream says this causes alarm bells to ring within his mind. Megatron forces himself to walk that last little distance between them, reaching out and grabbing one of Starscream’s listless hands. “Starscream,” he says cautiously. “What have you done?” and this time he cannot hide the fear (for himself, for Cybertron, but most of all for Starscream) he feels when the seeker allows him to do so.

They are lovers, and Megatron knew his seeker’s idiosyncrasies better than any other living mech. Starscream, for all that he could be affectionate when the mood struck him, for all that he could do things with his hands and mouth that left Megatron dizzily sated for joors afterward, hated being touched without permission. Most times Megatron touched him whenever he felt like it anyway, mostly because Starscream in a snit is an absurdly _cute_ Starscream, but this passive allowance is so far out of character as to be another mech.

Starscream’s smile widens at the sight of his fear. “Shh…” the seeker hushes him, voice gentle. “It will be all right soon. Soon, they will all regret crossing the seeker-kin, crossing _me_.”

Starscream’s helm tilts sharply for a second, and then his smile becomes fierce and the abyss fades from his optics, leaving them blazing with hatred and triumph and _life_. He raises one hand, pauses for a second, and then snaps at the same time he laughingly shouts: “NOW!”

There is silence, and then –

Fire _,_ is Megatron’s first thought, but no _fire_ is the bright color of liquid mercury. No mere _fire_ causes a great, heated cloud of ash and smoke so great that it completely blocks out the sun _._ Megatron stares uncomprehendingly at the horizon behind the seeker, which has just exploded in bright, heated light. He knows the sound of explosions, knows the sight of fire, knows the scent of burning metal. What he hears, what he sees, what he smells on the wind is no fire.

“What have you done?” he asks again, dropping his seeker’s limp hand and backing away.

Starscream simply smiles.

 

II.

He gets the reports the same time as many of his troops. Half of Cybertron – Iacon, Polyhex, Praxus, Axion, Trion, Tryptus, and so many other city-states and small towns – is gone. No rubble or debris, no corpses, no survivors. There are no craters, no cracks, no burns. It is as if every last town and mech within it simply disappeared. He is bewildered, and more afraid than ever. There is no logical explanation to what he has seen, no logical explanation for what the reports tell him.

The Autobot Senate, in order to combat the growing threat of the Decepticons, in order to remove the one race of mechs that not only were more than likely to be entirely sympathetic to the Decepticon cause but who also had a long and torrid history of uprisings, rebellions, and out-right treason against the Senate and the Dynasty of Primes before, ordered the complete annihilation of Vos and Vo’sil. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, as the current Winglord of the city-state had recalled all seekers and seeker-kin from their whereabouts all across Cybertron, issuing a statement that any who did not return were to be exiled from seeker society for all time.

Starscream had not left, and despite the threat of exile, those seekers he had hand-trained had stayed as well. In the upcoming weeks since the bombing more and more would make themselves known, having turned from their culture and heritage and everything they had ever known, choosing Starscream over the rightful Winglord of Vos. But these seekers are paltry few, and none are capable of bearing the next generation. They are the last seekers, all 147 of them, and there will never be another.

And in response, somewhere between the time it took the news to travel to the Decepticon base of Vos’ eradication and the time it took Megatron to realize that no one had seen his Second in Command for quite some time, Starscream had retaliated with extreme prejudice.

“What did you do, Starscream?"

Starscream looks at him, and smiles. And in that smile, and in those intense crimson-optics, there is the suggestion of _otherness_ , and at the edges Megatron can see hints of the great abyss he saw that day. “All seekers are sparked with a gift, Megatron. Our Sigma ability, if you will.” He steps closer to Megatron, slowly placing his hands on Megatron’s broad shoulders and sliding them back around Megatron’s neck until he has come as close as his cockpit will allow. “My care-takers were most disappointed by my gift when I was sparked.”

“What is your gift?” he asks warily. He thinks of Skywarp, Starscream’s pseudo-brother, who can teleport. He has always thought Skywarp’s ability to be something designed around his high energy fluctuations and intricate thinking processes, but if what Starscream is implying is true, it likely the other way around.

“ _Nothing_ ,” Starscream whispers to him.

Megatron doesn’t understand, but Starscream is in one of his moods, and all Megatron can do is hold on and enjoy. And he does, very much so, even if at the back of his processor there lingers the nagging thought that he has missed something very, very important.

 

III.

“Why do you allow him to do this, Megatron? He needs to be stopped, once and for all!”

Megatron sighs, and leans forward, bracing his helm on his hands as he tries to ignore the growing processor-ache. “And what would you have me do?” he asks slowly.

“Kill him!” comes the snarled answer, and at it Megatron sighs.

“It is not that simple,” he says.

“What are you so afraid of?” comes the curious tones of one of his guards. “He is just another mech,  isn’t he? What threat could he possibly be to you?”

Megatron sighs again. “Nothing,” he says, and there is a slight tremor in his voice that makes the other mechs – each chosen for their calm, rational thought processes and sound advice – look at each other in confusion. “I am afraid of nothing; I linger on the prospect of killing Starscream once and for all because of _nothing_.”

“I don’t understand,” another says quietly.

“Neither did I, at first,” Megatron says. “But I mean ‘nothing’ in the literal sense. I am afraid of the void within Starscream, the great abyss that he alone contains.” He gives up trying to soother the growing processor-ace as a bad job and raises his helm to stare bleakly at his council. “He erased half of Cybertron in less than five joors. No corpses, no shells, no broken buildings or misplaced rubble. It was as if that part of Cybertron had never once been developed by mechs.”

He smiles, bitterly. “I allow him to do as he wills because what can I do against a mech who could not just kill me, but erase my very existence and those of all the people I swore to lead to greatness?” He looks at each of them, sees the understanding dawning on their facial plating by the grim expressions of horror that are beginning to bloom, and asks, plaintively, “What am I supposed to do?”

They have no answer for him.


End file.
